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'.\X .., ..Øc ., ? ., ' ': . .:;:: k ..>,..". -r-' -,.,;,. ..- . 41 -, ' 1 , :1; ""1 ":., ';""" , <i:' "Let's goo some place where we can talk this thing over." over the name of a river, and another time he was caught talking about a flood when the scene had changed to a parade in California. Each time he cursed mildly, took a drink of water, and tried again. Between scenes, while the captions and introductory music were being run, he puffed at a ciga- rette and talked with Mr. Cochran. He argued fiercely about having to say "leaden tongues," but he finally said it. After he had stumbled once over "demilitarized trains," he made Mr. Cochran change it to "neutral trains," and we didn't blame him. When the last scene had been done he got up suddenly, said "Well, that's the three-hundred-and-seventy-sixth one," to nobody in partlcular, and went out. We went out, too, and went home. Trick A MR. WauK, beaming with pride, has told us of a way to make easy money . You bet somebody you can call any local number on a dial telephone without touching the dial. To do this, he explained, you pick up the receiver as usual and then tap out your number on the bar or hook. You can tap as rapidly as you like, providing you tap hard enough to press the bar or hook clear down. For the two letters preceding the number, you tap out the number of the slot in which the letter appears on the dial. Suppose you are challenged to call Police Headquarters, SPring 7-31 00. You tap seven times for "S" (because it's in the seventh hole . . of the dial), then pause, then tap seven . f " P " h h tlmes or , t en pause, t en seven again, pause, three, pause, one, pause, ten, pause, ten. We tried Police Head- quarters and the first two times got our exchange operator, but the third time we got the police. We didn't tell on Mr. Wouk, though. Consul General W E went down to 78 Water Street one afternoon this week to de- liver fifteen dollars to the Ethiopian government and to look over the new Ethiopian Consulate General. The fif- teen dollars was sent into this office by "Three young writers of Silvermine, Conn.," who asked us to deliver it. We thought the Consul General might fall on our neck and perhaps pin a medal on our breast, but he just said, practically, that he wasn't empowered to accept cash contributions. When we suggested that we might send a check directly to Haile Selassie, Addis Ababa, he said that wouldn't do either, because there's no direct American - Ethiopian exchange; said we'd have to buy an order on some British bank for sterling and send that to the Bank of Ethiopia, a government institution. "However," he added, "the Ethiopian sympathizers here will soon start raising a large sum by public sub- scription and you can give them your fifteen dollars." The Consul General is Mr. John H. Shaw, who is British-born but a na- turalized American. He received his commission only a few weeks ago, and there is nothing on the outside of his building yet to indicate that it's a con- sulate-just "John H. Shaw, Impor- ter," in neat white letters on the black store front. Mr. Shaw occupies the ground floor of an old warehouse. The front part is a kind of bookkeeper's cage, with two women in it, busy with papers. You rap at a glass window, and one of the women comes and shows you into the Consul General's office in the rear of the cage. This has no direct light, but has a lot of inlaid Ethiopian furni- ture. In back of this office, Mr. Shaw stores coffee, beeswax, hides, and leop- ard skins, which he imports from East ..Africa. Mr. Shaw, a small man en ter- ing upon middle age, has been trading with Ethiopia for thirty years, he told us, beginning as a clerk in a Manchester house which sent calico to Addis Ababa for barter against whatever the natives had. Ethiopia had no currency then; it has now, however. Mr. Shaw has lived in New York since 1919. He's made a dozen trips to Ethiopia and has met the Emperor. For years he had been urging Ethiopian officials to ap- point a consul in America) to boom trade and collect visa fees, as well as take care of Ethiopians who got into trouble here, although) Mr. Shaw told us frankly ) he'd never heard of such a case. Ethiopia did nothing about the matter until this summer, when he re- ceived a wireless saying he himself had been appointed consul. His commission followed by mail and is hanging on his wall now) a typewritten document in Arabic letters. It's in the Amharic lan- guage, official written tongue of E thi- opia, which he cannot read. But he